Working For The Weekend

Spazz Dad takes a moment to reflect on the weekend that was

One thing Spazz Dad can't do without on the weekends is hockey.

Image credit: Photo by Rhys Asplundh via Creative Commons

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Spazz Dad: When Hockey is More than Hockey

By: Todd Smith

The band Loverboy was right about one thing: everyone truly is just working for the weekend. Those two sweet days off at the end of our weekly grind are all that we have left. Sometimes we use the weekend to relax, and other times we use it get things done.

If you took a moment, though, and added up everything that you accomplished over a single weekend I beat you’d have quite a story. I took a moment to write down all the conversations I had, observations I captured, and events I attended from this past weekend. Here is recap of my buffoonery.

Friday, 4:12 p.m. Warming house at Interlachen Park, Edina. I was getting ready to play a vigorous game of outdoor pick-up hockey. My friend Mark barreled into the warming house to put his skates on. Besides being a middle school teacher, Mark is also a father of three children under the age of five. His lovely wife is also bravely battling a serious illness. Mark pulled a cold beer out of his hockey skate and cracked it open. “I need this,” Mark said.

Friday, 4:28 p.m, Hockey rink at Interlachen Park, Edina. Half of my pond hockey team (Dudeface) is on the ice warming up. I suggested that we all should play on the same team tonight in order to work on our chemistry, a hockey term used to define on-ice cohesion amongst teammates, before we play in the U.S. Pond Hockey Championship next weekend. After a wayward warm up shot by my Dudeface teammate Johnny Walker nearly broke my leg (Walker is a sniper, what can I say?), Mark said, “Chemistry? We’re all combustible elements on the periodic table.” He paused and looked at me and said, “You are yellow cake Uranium.”

Friday, 7:33 p.m. Red Bull Crashed Ice Championships, St. Paul. Attending the extreme downhill ice skating competition with my dad and brother, I witnessed grown men wiping out at dangerously fast speeds. Skaters shot down the course from the Cathedral of St. Paul’s steps and wound through moguls, hairpin curves and jumps towards the Xcel Energy Center. One guy wiped out so bad he brutally broke his leg and another guy went through the boards lining the course. There were 40,000 people there to watch the spectacle of this fast and frozen mouse trap game. We stood by a massive ice jump. Several contestants didn’t have enough energy to get up the incline. After they valiantly tried to climb the jump they pathetically slid back down on their stomachs. After one seriously sad attempt by a contestant, my dad leaned over and said, “The agony of defeat.”

Saturday, 8:02 a.m. Arden ice rink, Edina. A guy showed up to play hockey and his nickname was “The Black Lung.”

Saturday, 3:37 p.m. Palace ice rink, St. Paul. I played hockey with my friend Jim against a bunch of kids that were half our age (but had twice the energy). After my third outdoor hockey game in 24 hours, I could barely bend over to untie my skates. My legs were so stiff that I walked to my car like Frankenstein.

Saturday, 7:18 p.m. My couch, Minneapolis. Nestled in and watched two football games and two hockey games on TV, spastically switching between channels. During the ceremonial handshake between bitter rivals, the University of Minnesota and North Dakota, an assistant captain for the Fighting Sioux lost his shit and started a fight…after the game was over. God, I love hockey.

Sunday, 9:39 a.m. Mojo Doughnuts, St. Paul. Went on a “Dude Date” with my son Murphy and ate Maple éclairs garnished with strips of bacon on top. They were as good as advertised (thanks METRO for the heads up!). Murph also pounded a powdered sugar doughnut for good measure.

Sunday 1:22 p.m. Lion King, Orpheum Theater, Minneapolis. The theater was packed full of excited kids and their parents for this family-friendly weekend start time of the award-winning play. But we just happened to be sitting behind a very serious 50-year-old theater aficionado who apparently didn’t get the memo that the family friendly one o’clock showing of the Lion King, a play based on a Disney cartoon that featured the masterful puppeteering of animals who love to sing, laugh, and fart, was not, in fact, the showing of Julius Caesar at the Guthrie. When an actor, dressed as a giraffe, walked across the stage ON TWO PAIRS OF GIANT STILTS, and Murphy and his friend Graham whispered amazement to each other, the woman shushed them. Then when a herd of gazelles ran across the stage accompanied by three men guiding A MASSIVE ELEPHANT she shushed them again. What a buzz kill. Oh, and why does the African Meer Cat character talk like Joe Pesci?

Sunday, 4:03 p.m. Black Sheep Pizza, Minneapolis. Murphy and Graham sat at a table and ate the best pizza in town all the while playing with an entire set of LEGO ninjas that they expertly had been smuggling with them for the entire afternoon.

Sunday, 5:38 p.m. My couch, Minneapolis. Watched the Packers get routed. Zoinks.

Sunday, 7:07 p.m. My couch, Minneapolis. Watched the Golden Globes and heard host Ricky Gervais, the laser-tongued English comedian, openly talk about Jody Foster’s “beaver” while her two sons sat next to her. Now…that…is what I call a great ending to a great weekend.

+ Spazz Dad Todd Smith's columns appear in each issue of METRO. He blogs whenever the mood strikes for metromag.com. Read more of his work here.